Unsung snow samaritans rise from the storms

Michael Sorrentino pulled out of his driveway last week after a snowstorm.

Michael Sorrentino pulled out of his driveway last week after a snowstorm.

It was about 10 a.m. as he drove his plow truck to clear the family's tire center parking lot.

Down the street in their Jackson Township development was an elderly couple with shovels. The man and woman were about to dig out their driveway.

They were both in their 90s, bundled up in hats and gloves, each holding a plastic shovel.

Sorrentino, 27, had seen them with shovels before, but never got home in time to help them.

He stopped and asked the couple to put down the shovels and let him help. It was a small driveway, big enough to fit maybe three cars.

"Let me pay you," the man said, once Sorrentino was done.

"No way."

"Well here, I have some beer in my fridge. It's old, but it's been in the fridge."

"No, don't worry about it."

Sorrentino told the couple that anytime there's a storm, he'll be there.

The elderly man told Sorrentino he was a veteran and served during World War II. He invited Sorrentino into his home to show him some memorabilia, but Sorrentino had plowing to do.

But before he left, the war vet said: "There are young people all around us that never offer to help."

"He's just very giving," said Sorrentino's wife, Danielle Skibber.

Sorrentino plows an elderly couple's driveway across the street from his home. He also helps Skibber's family, too.

"My grandmother will call him every single day to bring her the paper," she said. "He goes to the gas station to bring the newspaper to her. I tell her to get a subscription, but I think she just likes the company."

There may be nothing remarkable about Sorrentino's acts. Kindness often goes unnoticed.

We asked readers last week to share their stories of storm samaritans.

There was one about a man in a red pick-up who, along with another motorist, stopped to push Karen Schubert Clark's car out of a snow bank. She was trying to get up her steep driveway on Frantz Road in Bartonsville.

The driver of the truck, equipped with a plow, then cleared Clark's driveway and waited at the bottom to see that she got up.

Another simple act of kindness gone unnoticed.

"It wouldn't kill someone our age to help someone who is our elder," 24-year-old Skibber said.